$1.5M Gift Creates Daniel T. Carroll Fellowship

A gift of $1,500,000 from Julie (Virgo) Noolan (AM ’68, PHD ’74, MBA ‘83) will endow the Daniel T. Carroll Fellowship in the University of Chicago Divinity School, a legacy that honors her late husband's life, accomplishments, and commitments.

“I am so grateful to Julie Noolan for this extraordinary legacy in honor of Dan Carroll," said Margaret M. Mitchell, Dean and Shailer Mathews Professor of Early Christian and New Testament Literature. "This gift will open doors for students and change their lives. We look forward to welcoming the inaugural Carroll Fellow to Swift Hall and the University this fall.”

Dr. Noolan has been an organization and management consultant, author, and teacher, with expertise in strategic planning, management and board assessment and development, and financial accountability. Prior to international management consulting, she was a librarian in Australia, later working in association management as the Executive Director of the Association of College and Research Libraries before joining The Carroll Group. She was an adjunct lecturer in the Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago for almost 20 years and then was a professorial lecturer in the Graduate School of Public Affairs at American University for 15 years. During that time she also served on eleven national and international Boards including the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (Rome, Italy) and the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (Aleppo, Syria). She served as President of the American Society of Information Science and Chair of the Board of the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science.

Mr. Carroll, was born in 1926 in Illinois, the son of high school sports coach who became a professor and ultimately rose to Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Vermont, Burlington, where Dan grew up. Mr. Carroll shared his father’s intellectual curiosity and was pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Chicago in social psychology and political science (1948-50) when interest in management redirected his career. After four years with the Navy as a management engineer, Mr. Carroll joined Booz Allen & Hamilton, where he worked from 1954 to 1972. Apart from five years as managing partner in Cleveland, Mr. Carroll worked in the Chicago office, rising to President of the Management Consulting Division. A move into corporate leadership at Gould, Inc., kept Mr. Carroll another 8 years in Chicago, until he became CEO of Hoover Universal, Inc., in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Mr. Carroll later returned to his first love, consulting, creating his own firm, The Carroll Group, with several colleagues. In 1994 he relocated to Vail, Colorado, to enjoy mountain living, while continuing to serve on corporate Boards. As noted in one of his obituaries, Mr. Carroll was “a legend in the fields of management consulting, corporate executive leadership and corporate governance.” He published a number of articles on management in distinguished journals (including Harvard Business Review) and was finishing a book on corporate board stewardship when he passed away in 2007.

Mr. Carroll shared his leadership and management expertise with many organizations. He served on boards for the University of Chicago Divinity School, Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminary (Ohio), Union Theological Seminary (New York), the Tuck School at Dartmouth College, the Chicago Urban League, and many more non-profits. Early on President Johnson tapped Mr. Carroll to provide advice about the creation of the White House Fellows program. Mr. Carroll also provided leadership on nearly two dozen corporate boards, firms like Aon, Wolverine Worldwide, American Woodmark, Flying Food Group, Oshkosh Truck Corporation, and Diebold. Colleagues valued the preparation, creative insights and courage he brought to board meetings. Aon has recognized Mr. Carroll’s service with a gift to the Divinity School of $450,000, which will begin funding a full fellowship in Fall 2015. Of all Mr. Carroll’s engagements, his most lengthy was as a member of the Divinity School Visiting Committee, on which he served from 1986 to 2006.

Dr. Noolan met Mr. Carroll on a whirlwind trip to Boca Raton with mutual friends. They soon realized they had found their soul mates and shared 32 wonderful years together. When Mr. Carroll launched The Carroll Group in 1982, Dr. Noolan partnered with him in that enterprise. They worked together until his sudden death.

Through emails at first and then in memorial services for Mr. Carroll in Vail, Colorado and Burlington, Vermont, family and friends from around the world expressed their tributes. His son described Mr. Carroll as a “parent, mentor, hero, friend,” a co-worker as a “remarkable man and a great role model.” People recalled many outstanding qualities, and a number were repeated often, among them integrity, courage, loyalty, creativity, humility, kindness, and charisma. With their expressions of affection and admiration, however, people were just as quick to note the love he and Dr. Noolan shared. One of Mr. Carroll’s colleagues observed “how Dan lit up with delight when talking about his beloved Julie.”

In creating the Daniel T. Carroll Fellowship, Dr. Noolan sought to celebrate Mr. Carroll’s life and values. The Fellowship reflects his interest in education, the study of religion, and relationship to the Divinity School, while also promoting social justice, for which he was a consistent champion. The Daniel T. Carroll Fellowship will provide access to a Divinity School education for those for whom it would be impossible without such a generous scholarship; the Carroll Fellowship will help level the playing field for them through the pursuit of education.

The gift is part of the University of Chicago Campaign: Inquiry and Impact, the most ambitious and comprehensive campaign in the University’s history, which is raising $4.5 billion over five years to support faculty and researchers, practitioners and patients, and students and programs across the University.

The Divinity School is honored to recognize its longstanding relationship with Mr. Carroll and to steward his distinguished legacy through the Daniel T. Carroll Fellowship.